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Re: I don't understand this complaint about treatment free beekeepers

Originally Posted by rhaldridge

All things considered, I'd rather be a forum hero than a forum joke. You're at that fork in the road.

I really like this quote, so much so that I have bookmarked it. Ray's entire post (clicking the blue arrow in the quote box will take you there) is right on the money, and has application beyond being merely a response to the former Pipiyolti.

Re: I don't understand this complaint about treatment free beekeepers

Originally Posted by sqkcrk

He must have been the first to demand it?

Happy to comply with demands like that. I practice TF beekeeping, but I will never throw verbal rocks at my commercial friends and make them out to be the enemy. We can learn from each other if we're not busy picking up rocks to throw.

Re: I don't understand this complaint about treatment free beekeepers

I highly recommend that any small scale beekeeper attend an ABF, EAS, Honey Producers, etc. convention. I'm a small scale guy with 11 hives, heading towards 20, who went to the ABF Convention in Hershey, and the EAS Convention in West Chester, PA. I'll bee heading to Kentucky next year. Nuclear Power pays the bills, and bees are my soon to be sideline business. I tell people that want to get into beekeeping that I always know what will happen when we split a uranium atom, but the bees keep finding ways to prove me wrong. It's easier to heard cats, than to get 30,000 bees to do what you want. The purpose of this rant, is to say to the new people that you have to get out and meet these people who keep hundreds, and thousands, of hives. The ones I have met, are very helpful, know a lot, and are very willing to share. They care greatly about their bees, and have a lot more reason to care about the integrity of beekeeping than we do. If you manage to get the likes of Michael Palmer telling you don't have a clue. Trust me, you don't.

Re: I don't understand this complaint about treatment free beekeepers

The real danger, as opposed to a nuisance (even a serious one) is American Foul Brood. Untreated, AFB can spread and cause serious damage and losses and can be hard to eliminate. Mites could be bad enough if someone is "treatment free" and generating huge numbers of them to be a serious problem rather than a nuisance, but AFB is the real problem. One problem with large numbers of amateur beekeepers with small numbers of hives is that they are unlikely to recognize AFB in it's early stages, and spread it to large operations by pure ignorance. Not likely to make the guy a couple miles away with several hundred hives very happy, eh?

We would all, I'm sure, love to be totally treatment free. Treatment costs money and time and effort I'm sure we could all use in other ways, but healthy, non-infested bees are what we all want and sometimes treatments are the only way to get there.

That said, I suspect there are better ways to treat for mites that rather powerful organophosphate insecticides in the hive. Oxalic acid vapor, formic acid, sugar dusting, etc are far less harmful to the bees and certainly to us, and don't leave large amounts of nasty stuff in the comb. They are STILL treatments, though!

Re: I don't understand this complaint about treatment free beekeepers

Jeez, all this condescending towards new beekeepers... it gets really old. Why should people have to follow the same failure of our fathers to prove something?? It reminds me of an interesting Joel Salatin remark about new farmers discussing their ideals and goals with old, commercial farmers. Mostly what you'll get will be resistance and an attempt to rub it in your face that you lack enough experience and investment to be credible. Essentially because these older farmers types have FAILED at doing what the newbie is trying to do! Just because the old hands can't figure out a way to be forward and progressive, doesn't mean the newbies are INVALID, or incapable of sucess.

If 500 hives is the magical number that validates you as a beekeeper, FORGET IT! What an unsustainable amount of hives!!!!!! As an holistic agricultural business model it make NO SENSE!
I intend to keep enough bees to support a medicinal hive product line and queen rearing, as a SIDELINE to my orchard which in turn supports my sugaring, draft horses, berries, poultry/waterfowl, seed production...

It seems we only run into trouble when we have this intensive, linear business model that is completely dependent on the status quo.

Also, I think under the best intentions this thread was a dead end dog fight.

Re: I don't understand this complaint about treatment free beekeepers

I didn't see anyone being condescending... they got exactly what they asked for didn't they? I mean it takes some balls to come in here with less than a year under your belt claiming ur the greatest treatment free success story while multiplying ur hive count 20 fold w/o spending a dime at the same time telling anyone who treats bees they're doing it wrong and it's so easy to make a living off bees being a treatment free migratory beekeeper.... I mean, come on, it's easy to not treat your bees and come up with a super bee to provide the whole country right???

Re: I don't understand this complaint about treatment free beekeepers

Originally Posted by deejaycee

The smell is not always obvious RH, and when it is, the hives has often gone so far it is a significant robbing risk - therefore a much greater danger to other hives.

I did not know that. The stuff I've read describes it as a pretty powerful stench. I guess the only thing you can do is look at the brood, but in other threads I've been advised not to bother the bees constantly. Of course, as a beginner, I do bother the bees constantly, in an effort to learn, but I can't imagine that a guy with a lot of hives goes through them frame by frame very often. I'm also told that some of the best beekeepers try to avoid prophylactic antibiotics, so... What to do?

It's also a bit hard for me to believe that a backyard beekeeper with a few isolated hives is at as much risk of developing AFB as a commercial beekeeper who is just back from the almonds with a few thousand hives, but maybe I'm wrong.

So far, what I've learned from this thread is that bad beekeepers, whether they treat or not, are a danger to their neighbors. There have been a couple of anecdotes about irresponsible treatment free beekeepers, but I'd bet serious money that the folks who told those anecdotes have also had trouble with incompetent conventional beekeepers.

I think the best argument against the idea that treatment free beekeepers are endangering their neighbors relies on numbers. Even though we appear to be an unusually loud and obnoxious group, our numbers are actually very small, at least in terms of hive counts. There might be a hundred times as many conventionally managed hives as treatment free hives, or maybe even more than that.

Re: I don't understand this complaint about treatment free beekeepers

It's hard to imagine even a beginner not noticing that his hive smells like death. Though I do have a brother-in-law with no sense of smell. He probably shouldn't be a beekeeper.

Often not that potent a smell, especially early on in the infection. I have had pretty advanced cases which I couldn't smell. Other times I have walked into an apiary and noticed a smell and "known" AFB was present.

Re: I don't understand this complaint about treatment free beekeepers

Originally Posted by Hazel-Rah

Jeez, all this condescending towards new beekeepers... it gets really old. Why should people have to follow the same failure of our fathers to prove something??

Hazel, I think you miss my point. It has nothing to do with numbers. When YOUR colony breaks down with AFB, just where do you think it came from? Not from the air, not from the ground...but from a neighboring hive that died from the disease.

Re: I don't understand this complaint about treatment free beekeepers

Originally Posted by Hazel-Rah

Jeez, all this condescending towards new beekeepers... it gets really old. Why should people have to follow the same failure of our fathers to prove something?? It reminds me of an interesting Joel Salatin remark about new farmers discussing their ideals and goals with old, commercial farmers. Mostly what you'll get will be resistance and an attempt to rub it in your face that you lack enough experience and investment to be credible. Essentially because these older farmers types have FAILED at doing what the newbie is trying to do! Just because the old hands can't figure out a way to be forward and progressive, doesn't mean the newbies are INVALID, or incapable of sucess.

If 500 hives is the magical number that validates you as a beekeeper, FORGET IT! What an unsustainable amount of hives!!!!!! As an holistic agricultural business model it make NO SENSE!
I intend to keep enough bees to support a medicinal hive product line and queen rearing, as a SIDELINE to my orchard which in turn supports my sugaring, draft horses, berries, poultry/waterfowl, seed production...

Hazel-Rah,
Pipi wasn't just a new beekeeper, he was a disrespectful radical fanatic who thought he knew things he could not have known from lack of real world experience. He/she wasn't here to exchange ideas and listen to reason. I appreciate that your tone is not inflamitory.

I have not failed yet. Continuing to keep bees in the face of the mite/virus complex is not failure. Being open to ideas wherever they come from is not failure. Noting ideas and recognizing them as things thjat didn't work is not failure. Keep in mind that some folks have been around long enough to have seen this movie under its original production.

I gotta ask, are you serious about keeping bees to support those other things? What is this Medicinal hive product business that will do that? I'm sure others would like to know. Maybe others could benefit from your idea too.

Five hundred hives is what is commonly considered being commercial, amongst commercial beekeepers anyway. Sure you can run a bee business w/ fewer. It's just an easy number to throw out there when someone w/ 20 hives trys to tell someone w/ a huge amount more how they are wrong.

Re: I don't understand this complaint about treatment free beekeepers

Originally Posted by rhaldridge

We can't do a whole lot of damage.

Ray,
Here's how I see it. Going back a few years to when TBH beekeeping started to be noticed in NY, coinciding w/ the "the bees are dying and we need to save them" idea/fad(?), there was some concern that people were or would just buy bees and throw them in a box and not do anything w/ them.

As an Apiaty Inspector, which I am not now and have not been for 7 years, I have seen what happened when Apple Orchard Owners owned beehives. every Spring they would buy packages and fill in the deadouts. No consideration to why those hives were devoid of bees. They weren't keeping bees they were buying pollination.

There is one orchard where the owners are beekeepers. Yet I have traded combs w/ them when I have sold them nucs and had every nuc box full of comb be riddled w/ AFB scale. This from someone who should have noticed.